COVID-19 New Strain: Total 58 People in India Have Tested Positive for New Variant of Coronavirus, Says Health Ministry
The Ministry said that all the infected patients have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments. The close contacts of these people have also been put under quarantine. The Ministry informed that comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others.
New Delhi, January 5: As many as 58 people have tested positive for the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in India so far, the Union Health Ministry said on Tuesday. The Ministry said that all the infected patients have been kept in single room isolation in designated healthcare facilities by respective state governments. The close contacts of these people have also been put under quarantine. The Ministry informed that comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others and genome sequencing on other specimens is going on. New Coronavirus Strain: India First in World to Successfully Culture and Isolate 'UK Variant' of COVID-19-Causing SARS-CoV-2 Virus.
According to reports, the mutated UK strain was detected in samples at National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), New Delhi, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata), National Institute of Virology in Pune, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and were sequenced at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS), Bengaluru.
The presence of the new UK variant has already been reported by Denmark, Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Japan, Lebanon and Singapore. The new mutation of the COVID-19 virus strain in United Kingdom has become a 'super-spreader' with 70 percent increased transmissibility rate. This is a mutated and more aggressive strain of coronavirus.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 05, 2021 12:30 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).